A telehandler or a telescopic handler is a machinery that is popular within the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are similar in appearance and function to a forklift or a lift truck but are really more like a crane instead of a forklift. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect many attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments comprise: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler typically uses pallet forks as their most common attachment to be able to move loads through places that are normally not reachable for a conventional forklift. Like for example, telehandlers can move cargo to and from locations that are not usually reachable by standard forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for example. Previously, this aforementioned situation will need a crane. Cranes can be really expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest limitation: since the boom raises or extends when the equipment is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unbalanced, despite the rear counterweights. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing quickly as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the front of the wheels and the center of the load.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 pound lift capacity which has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England originally pioneered telehandlers. These equipment were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the driver's cab on the machine's rear portion, like in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has since become more famous.